Walking from the Farragut North Washington DC Metro station to DAR
Constitution Hall, an Octagon Museum caught my attention and I read a
plaque outside of the Museum because the Museum was closed for repairs. I
was astonished to learn that a slave, Paul Jennings, wrote the first
memoir of a White House event and he was a violinist. See http://www.nps.gov/people/paul-jennings.htm

Thanks

John Malveaux

U.S. National Park ServicePresident's Park (White House)

Quick Facts

Significance:

Author of first White House memoir

Place of Birth:

Montpelier, Virginia

Date of Birth:

1799

Place of Death:

Washington, D.C.

Date of Death:

1874

A slave in the service of Dolley and James Madison
for 48 years, Paul Jennings has provided valuable insight into their
character, as well as life for a slave in the White House. Some credit
Jennings rather than Dolley Madison with saving the portrait of George
Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart from the burning White House in
1813, but perhaps Jennings’ most valuable contribution to history is his
memoir, “A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison.”
Although this document, published in a magazine in 1863 and again as a
memoir in 1865, allows us to know much more about James Madison, little
is known about Jennings himself.

Jennings was born into slavery on
James Madison’s Virginia plantation, Montpelier, in 1799. He was the
son of a female slave of mixed African and American Indian heritage, and
English trader Benjamin Jennings. Although plantation life was
undoubtedly hard, Jennings reflected that slaves were treated with
respect, and that he “never knew [Madison] to strike a slave, although
he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it.”
As a house slave and personal servant to such an important statesman as
James Madison, Jennings was allowed a basic education. Unlike most
slaves of the time, he was literate, educated in mathematics, and could
even play the violin. In 1809, he accompanied the Madisons as they moved
to the White House. Jennings spent his teenage years as a slave there,
likely serving as a butler and serving on the family and their guests.

Jennings’ memoir reveals intimate details of life in the White House,
especially on the evening of August 23, 1814, when an invading British
army arrived in Washington, D.C. He reflects that “Mrs. Madison ordered
dinner to be ready at 3, as usual.” As Jennings and the other slaves
prepared the dinner, word arrived that the British had landed. Frenzied,
Dolley Madison carried off only “the silver in her reticule, as the
British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected at
every moment.” As for the Lansdowne portrait, Jennings attributes its salvation to door-keeper John Susé and the president’s gardener, Magraw.

After
two terms of the presidency, the Madisons returned to Montpelier in
1817. Jennings was promoted to James Madison’s primary manservant,
responsible for dressing and shaving James as well as accompanying him
on trips, a position which he held until James Madison’s death in 1836.

In
1822, Jennings married Fanny Gordon, a slave on a neighboring
plantation, and had five children together. Despite being married for 22
years, Jennings and his wife never spent more than a weekend together
at a time. The same year as Fanny’s death, Dolley Madison sold the
Montpelier estate. Jennings was retained as Mrs. Madison’s personal
servant, however was sold to pay off debt in 1848. Shortly after, he was
purchased and freed by Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster.

Jennings
was freed in Washington, D.C., home to one of the largest populations
of free people of color in the United States. Almost immediately,
Jennings began working with white abolitionists to arrange one of the
largest – albeit unsuccessful – slave revolts in the United States. In
April 1848, 77 slaves were sent aboard the schooner Pearl to
freedom in the north. Although obviously opposed to slavery, Jennings
seemed to harbor no ill-will to his former owners. Jennings described
James Madison as “one of the best men that ever lived,” and Dolley
Madison as “a remarkably fine woman” in his memoir.